LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) – A dentist found the source of the toothache Patrick Lawler was complaining about on the roof of his mouth: a four-inch nail the construction worker had unknowingly embedded in his skull six days earlier.
A nail gun backfired on Lawler, 23, on Jan. 6 while working in Breckenridge, a ski resort town in the central Colorado mountains. The tool sent a nail into a piece of wood nearby, but Lawler didn’t realize a second nail had shot through his mouth, said his sister, Lisa Metcalse.
Following the accident, Lawler had what he thought was a minor toothache and blurry vision. On Wednesday, after painkillers and ice didn’t ease the pain, he went to a dental office where his wife, Katerina, works.
“We all are friends, so I thought the (dentists) were joking … then the doctor came out and said ‘There’s really a nail,'” Katerina Lawler said. “Patrick just broke down. I mean, he had been eating ice cream to help the swelling.”
He was taken to a suburban Denver hospital, where he underwent a four-hour surgery. The nail had plunged 1 1/2 inches into his brain, barely missing his right eye, Metcalse said.
“This is the second one we’ve seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn’t actually realize the nail had been imbedded in their skull,” neurosurgeon Sean Markey told KUSA-TV in Denver. “But it’s a pretty rare injury.”
Lawler was recovering Sunday in the hospital, where he was expected to spend several more days.
Despite his lack of medical insurance and hospital bills between $80,000 and $100,000, Katerina Lawler said her husband is in good spirits.
“The doctors said, ‘If you’re going to have a nail in the brain, that’s the way you want it to be,'” she said. “He’s the luckiest guy, ever.”
Anybody care to explain to me how a nailgun can not only double fire, but also do it directly at the operator’s face? or does this guy need a major pee in the cup test? i lived in breckenridge for awhile in the early ’90s- drug use was rampant in the ski town.
m
Replies
>> Despite his lack of medical insurance and hospital bills between $80,000 and $100,000 ...
Shouldn't WC cover his medical bills?
That's one seriously tough dude... a nail in his face and he eats a little ice cream to try to take the edge off.
"This is the second one we've seen"
must be a whole tough town!
Jeff Buck Construction
Artistry in Carpentry
Pgh, PA
I'm thinking that the part of the brain damaged must have been the part that recieves sensory input ( read Pain)
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the dude's first thought was ice cream!
I'm going with the tough guy theory ....
Jeff Buck Construction
Artistry in Carpentry
Pgh, PA
"I'm thinking that the part of the brain damaged must have been the part that recieves sensory input ( read Pain)"Either that, or he was talking plenty of "pain killers" before the accident. I just don't see how you can shoot a nail through the roof of your mouth and not notice something is wrong unless you're already heavily medicated.
"tough dude"... that may even be an understatement.......
I'da been looking for a morphine drip and you'd still hear me cry from three towns away! LOL... sheesh.
You gotta wonder how that could happen and the guy didn't know..... scary stuff.
I've never seen a nail gun that could shoot 4" nails.
I've never met a reporter who didn't like a little hyperbole
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Whole thing sounds like one of those urban legends, TTTT.
There are too many pieces of 'information' that are each individually hard to believe:
1. 4" nails in a nail gun
2. Nail gun 'backfiring' straight back into a guy's mouth
3. No telltale blood from the injury to give the guy a clue he'd been shot
4. Not enough pain to make the guy seek medical attention right away
Put it all together, and 'hard to believe' becomes an understatement....
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
I'm not arguing it one way or the other. Maybe it is a "story"But I would respond to your points -
The 4" for the nail did get my attention, but I have had plenty of experience with reporters who didnot make accuracy in reporting the highest priority
"Backfire" is probably another example of the poor literary skills of today's reporters. If the even happened, it more likely ricocheted off the head of the nail that preceded it. i have more than once seen double fires, on atop the other. Usually folding the second one up, but sometimes flying off or back spectacularly
puncture wounds typically do not provide much blood trail. A puncture in the roof of his mouth could easily go without notice.
Pain - already mentioned one fantaastic reason he may have discounted that, but there are people who have less sensitivity , and brain injury has no pain.So maybe it never happened, but I don't find it hard to believe at all. I fell off a ladder once, and never felt a thing until three days later when it hit me, then i had to spend three days in bed
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I don't think I quite said it was impossible, just somewhat past 'hard-to-believe'. Any one of those points taken by itself would tend to make one's eyebrows climb a bit; all four combined and it becomes too much for my jaded brain to accept.
And I agree with you about reporters. As someone who's been on the scene of three or four relatively major news stories during my lifetime, I have never read a report--even in a respected newspaper like the NY Times--that matched what I saw and heard during the actual event....
Anyway, apparantly the guy got hurt somehow and I'm glad he's gonna be okay. Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
It was in the local paper along with a picture of the xray. It is an AP story.And at the sametime yesterday there is another thread started with a link to the xray.However, it must be noted that there is more than one person that is know to "test" the news media by putting out stories to see if they will go with them with out really checking it out.They come to light every year or two.
Here are 2 stories from local papers that give a little more details, but not much.It says that the nailer "recoiled" and hit him in the face. Thus he felt that, but did not realize that it also fired a nail.Possibly he was toe nailing something about face level and had his bace near the stud. The gun recoiled off the stud and then instead of the gun tip going back on the stud it went towards his face. Might not have even contacted. Might have brushed the edge of the stud and fire and he just though that the gun hit him.http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2656432,00.htmlhttp://www.summitdaily.com/article/20050116/NEWS/101160001
All I can say is "What was going through his head when this happened?"
this was on the local TV with interviews
bobl Volo, non valeo
Baloney detecter
Um that would be the nail silly. Wernt you paying attention?
Great pun line! I bet this guy will have heard them all before he is healed, including the line about him already being "hammered" before he got "nailed"
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"That's gotta be the clincher."
"A 20 penny for your thoughts?"
I think a guy copuld get bent out of shape over this sort of thing
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
All jokes aside, I'd really like to know just what he was doing when the
accident happened. What am I supposed to avoid in the future so that
I don't accidently shoot a nail into my mouth? And just what kind of
nail gun was he using?(I just saw him on TV by the way, and he held up and correctly described
the 16 penny nail as 3 1/4" -- so chalk another one up to sloppy
reporting.)John
Man..... how I hate to admit this....but I too have been the landing zone for a 3.25 inch framing nail. Mine took a 90 degree turn out of a crappy 2 x 4 I was nailing to another for a cleat arrangement, and.... BAM! ....my palm feels like...well, like it was hit with a nail! What a surprise! Pain that resembles the incident!
I was very lucky, in addition to being very dumb. My hand knows better than to be within inches of such activity, but it was late in the day, and yada yada yada.
The nail sunk completely, across my palm, neatly missing all the good stuff that would have cost big bucks to fix. My local friendly doc pulled it out with.....a pair of pliers. (Geee Doc, I coulda done THAT!)
So, sure, I can see nails doing some funny stuff. But this guy takes the cake. Anyone here ever get a shot of novacaine in the roof of your mouth? I have....and I'll never forget it. I saw the nail, the doc, the X-ray and the patient on the news...I am sure this happened.....but his wife should be calling AA pretty soon, because if this guy wasn't totally drunk at the time, his bills will drive him to drink.
Amazing. Jake Gulick
[email protected]
CarriageHouse Design
Black Rock, CT
What you said about the doc pulling the nail out of your hand with pliers reminds me of a story my dad tells about a machine needing to be fixed. They send for the repairman and he comes and smacks it with a hammer and it runs. Sends the bill that says, "Hitting machine with hammer:$100." Foreman tells him he has to explain better that that, just hitting with a hammer isn't worth $100. Guy sends revised bill "Hitting with hammer: $5. Knowing where to hit: $95."
Oh, I have had novacaine in roof of mouth; you are right, it is a memorable experience. But so is dentist drilling a nerve, or for that matter, shooting novacaine into a nerve (though the latter only hurts for, oh, pain's gone).
"All I can say is "What was going through his head when this happened?"
A nail is what was going through his head. ha ha
ps - I was listening to a radio show this a.m. and a nurse called in and said she had a patient not too long ago who scratched his forehead with a nail gun and it went off. Put a finishing nail in his head. Luckily it was mostly under the skin so they just pulled it out.
Along the lines of guy scratching his head with nailgun (bet that got rid of the itch!) I heard of someone scrathing his back with circular saw in hand. When my brother burn himself in the HS chem lab, teacher told him a guy was holding fuming nitric acid in a test tube and scratched his back and poured the nitric down his back--he had a bunch of stories like that.
Ouch! That makes for a bad day. Kind of makes you wonder.
"What was going through his head....?" Apparently a nail was at least trying. Like the last thing to go through a bug's brain when it hits your windshield--its butt.
I shot myself in the palm of my hand with a 12 penny. I never felt a thing. I did'nt know what happened until I looked to see where the blood was coming from
amazing the change of attitude when ya look to see where the blood is coming from...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
Here's another one from last year and he didn't even get ice cream
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/health/main615843.shtml
well that's kinda what i was looking for, thanks- my nailgun experience is extremely limited and while i realize a unit with a bump fire nose could go off twice in rapid succession (maybe even one not so equipped), i couldn't envision how a nail could get shot backwards, but now that i think about it, that's not necessarily what happened. let's say maybe the guy was holding onto the piece of lumber with his left hand, gun in right, and his face well to the left so as to observe the point of impact- as opposed to directly behind the gun- it double fires, ricochets off the first nail's head right into his mouth?
but i still think he was flying high if he didn't even notice getting hit...
m
(consumer reports says piffin screws are extremely resistant to this sort of mishap)
Edited 1/17/2005 8:50 am ET by mitch